


Aurelius

by themuggleriddle



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Trans Male Character, the only way i can accept the whole aurelius dumbledore thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25540003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themuggleriddle/pseuds/themuggleriddle
Summary: Grindelwald had stayed behind, just like Albus and Aberforth, his brothers that had been so worried about getting their sister back that they never looked after their brother.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Aurelius

Names are powerful. That’s what Aberforth said when he told stories about faeries: “Never give ‘em your true name, or else they’ll take you away.”

They were just stories, of course, but he never gave away his real name. Maybe it was cheating, but what could he do if he had yet known his real name? There was the name his mama had given him, but that was not his name, not really. Words were magical, said Albus, and names even more so, but the one Kendra and Percival had written down on his birth certificate held no magic, not to him.

It was Albus’s friend who helped him. On a bright summer day, while his brothers delayed supper because of yet another argument, Gellert sat down by his side in the garden and started to talk. He talked about the school from which he had been expelled and the fur-lined uniforms the students wore, about the different languages spoken inside that castle and the translation spells that couldn’t hide the many accents of the students; he spoke in his own language, using strange words that scratched his throat and came out of his mouth ready to strike someone.

The best part, though, was to hear Gellert describe the village from which he came from: small, placed by a dark lake rounded by snow-topped mountains. On the top of a hill stood a church with people buried on its grounds and walls, next to a chapel full of skulls and bones. Labyrinths of tunnels spread inside the mountains, taking men and women underground in search for salt, the biggest treasure of that place. By night, a deadly silence filled the mountains and it was possible to hear the magic that still echoed from the decaying bones on the graveyard, inside the mines and in the forests.

“Will you go back?” he asked, eventually looking up from the flowers he was playing with and looking into the smiling face of his brother’s friend.

“No. It’s beautiful, but it’s the end of the world. No one goes there to stay, just to visit. And those who are there… well, they never leave, as if they’re bound to the mountains like the salt.”

“You left.”

“I’m not like them.” He winked.

“Tell me again about the chapel?”

“Dumbledores do like morbid details, don’t they?” Gellert laughed, crossed his legs and straightened his back. He was dramatic, like Albus. “On the church’s ground there’s a graveyard, but it’s too small and can’t fit everyone in.”

“So they started to dig up the dead.”

“That’s right.” The wizard chuckled and tapped the tip of his nose. “They took the oldest bodies out, those that were skeletons, and cleaned them. They called a mortician to paint each skull with symbols and the name of the deceased.” Gellert raised his hand and dragged his fingers along his forehead. “This way their families could find them inside the charnel house.”

He kept silent and frowned as he watched Grindelwald.

“I’d like to be put in there without my name painted on my skull.”

“Oh why not? Wouldn’t you like for your brothers to find you?” The wizard cocked his head, looking like a curious bird.

“This is forever. I don’t want my name there forever.”

“Why? It’s a beautiful name.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

Gellert, like Albus, was couldn’t bear an unanswered question. He simply shrugged and kept plucking the petals of the marigold he held in his hand. The wizard by his side seemed agitated for a moment, tapping his fingers to his knee, before taking a deep breath and smiling.

“What about Aurelius?”

He looked up and blinked. The smile on Gellert’s face was playful and he couldn’t tell if it was a joke. He felt his cheeks burn as the wizard leaned in.

“What do you think?”

“Aurelius?”

“Your new name. One that pleases you.” Gellert pulled a dandelion from the earth and dropped it on his skirt. “A name you’d like to have engraved on your skull. Come on, what do you think!?”

“Aurelius,” he repeated, trying to taste the name on his tongue. It was rounder than his other name, more flexible, and it was smoother as it crawled up his throat. Maybe it was the magic about which Albus and Aberforth always spoke, the comfortable feeling expanding in his chest as he repeated the word, now imagining it as part of himself. “Aurelius,” he whispered once again, trying to fill each sound with magic, even if it was just that greyish and volatile magic that burst out of him when he was scared or angry. It had been kept inside for so long that it easily attached itself to the first thing that came out of his mouth: “ _Aurelius_.”

* * *

The lake’s surface was still as there was no wind to stir the cold waters, but there was something making the man nervous. The mountains seemed to rumble, soft and constant, making something tremble inside him. He knew the rumble coming from the mountains, he had felt it when he first arrived there, many years before, and could still feel it on some buildings or rocks, too strong to be erased by time. He had also felt it before arriving on that country. He had seen it at it’s peak, ready to destroy whoever crossed its path.

Aurelius never knew how he managed to escape the spells and curses that whizzed through his old house’s living room. One of the spells was bound to hit him sooner or later, as he hadn’t had time to hide as Aberforth did. But he was not hit, not even by a push or a scream. He was between his brothers and Gellert in one moment and, in the blink of an eye, he was on the top of a mountain, looking down on a big, dark and sparkling lake the next.

He didn’t walk down the village as soon as he arrived. He walked on the opposite direction, up the mountain, towards a cottage lost on the hillside. There were men inside and, silently, Aurelius stole some clothes left outside to dry and vanished inside the forest. He was quick and silent, abilities one acquired when they had to run away from Muggle boys and keep quiet in order not to disturb Albus’s studies.

When he finally stepped inside the village, the villagers barely saw him. He was just another young boy smeared with dust and salt, trying to find food. He was, after all, very good in being invisible.

Aurelius couldn’t remember very well how he survived during the first months, before the priest took him in. The village was small and picturesque, and the villagers were not used to boys who were too small and couldn’t speak their language, but he could clean and obey orders that could be given through gestures and simple words that he soon began to understand. Aurelius cleaned the church before the service and helped the people to clean their loved ones’ graves. The charnel house was also his responsibility: he opened and closed it every day, dusted the bones and talked to them. After months of these tasks, he became responsible for painting the newcomers.

After years of church services and painted skulls, Aurelius felt the rumbling of the mountains and something inside himself stirred in response. Magic answering magic.

_“Liebling?”_

He turned. The woman watched him with sleepy eyes. It was summer and the sun shone early, outside the sky was beginning to clear. The world was suspended between wakefulness and sleep, the moment during which magic could roam freely through the streets of villages and cities, hidden by the end of the night.

 _“Alles gut,”_ he said, smiling to his wife and keeping his face relaxed long enough for the tension to leave her shoulders.

 _“Komm schlaf bei mir, Aurelius,”_ she asked and turned around, walking back inside.

Aurelius looked at the alps again. There it was again, the magic he had first encountered in Godric’s Hollow.

There was also something growing. Something familiar that pulled at his insides and made him tense and responsive. Something that poked at his weird an chaotic magic inside him, asking for it to come out.

He couldn’t explain how, but he knew there was someone else like him around, and someone with his name. Maybe it was all about magic: the sentient magic inside him recognised another like itself and the name… well, names are magic. Maybe Gellert, with his magic that made the mountains tremble, was trying to baptize someone in order to take them away. That was what he had tried to do: he gave Aurelius his name and, like the faeries, tried to take him from his home. But Aurelius was quicker and escaped being spirited away to a world of greater goods.

As he watched the lake and the mountains, Aurelius wished he could warn the poor soul that had just become Gellert Grindelwald’s godson. But there was nothing he could do. Grindelwald had stayed behind, just like Albus and Aberforth, his brothers that had been so worried about getting their sister back that they never looked after their brother. His life was now tied to that village and that charnel house, to the wife that waited for him inside the house by the lake. Aurelius didn’t see a problem in being like the salt inside the mountains: bound to that place, resistant and, why not, precious.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story soon after visiting Hallstatt, a village by the Hallstatt lake in Austria, last year. I've been toying with the idea of Aurelius/Ariana for quite some time and being in Austria was what I needed to kick me into writing this. You can look up Hallstatt's charnel house for some beautifully painted skulls (between the two charnel houses I visited during my time in Europe, this was my favourite).
> 
> I translated this story from Portuguese really quickly today while I was missing Austria so very much (I was supposed to be there right now but you know, Coronavirus), so I'm sorry for any mistakes in my English, but if there's something too blatantly wrong, please let me know.


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